Wednesday, December 03, 2008

I'm Too Saxby for My Shirt/Franken's of Maplewood

Have tried to stay away from the Senate mess, but two things happened yesterday that merit comment.

First, Saxby Chambliss wins his runoff election in a rout. That pretty much puts the 60-vote, filibuster-proof Senate dream of Harry Reid to rest. Will that mean that Reid will now have less reason to attempt to seat Franken, as has been rumored?

Meanwhile, 171 votes from Maplewood surface that hadn't been counted on election day, giving Franken an extra 37 votes. While that probably won't make a difference in the end, it's still disconcerting for two reasons: first, that Franken is already waaaaay too close, and second, it makes me wonder what has happened to the citizens of Maplewood, which is usually a fairly sober precinct. Maybe something that 3M buried in the ground years ago is leaching into the water table?

2 comments:

I'm still having a hard time trying to fathom how he even got considered as a candidate, yet alone that he's this close to possibly winning.

I don't follow our state politics at all; but I have a hard time believing that it could be so laced with incompetent politicians that they couldn't find one more experienced or capable than some dimwitted, quasi-celebrity who didn't even live in the state when he decided to run.

Evidently the patients are running the asylum for democrats in this state.

The 60 vote thing is somewhat mythical since its assumes an ironclad party discipline that doesn't exist on either side. You don't need 60 Democrats, you need 60 votes. Either side would need to pick up another half dozen seats to make it a sure thing either way. Olympia Snow, Arlen Specter, even Senator Maverick, among others, can't be counted on to stick with the Rs on all issues. I'm sure you can come up with a similar list of folks on my side of the isle.